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25 Aug 2016

The pressure
was on for the 2nd year Ara Diploma in Culinary Arts students as
they faced the challenge of running a Pop Up Restaurant at the City Campus with
a budget of only $20 and one hour to prepare three courses. This was part of
their Diploma assessment.

Cookery
tutor David Tame wanted the students to experience a real life situation and
get outside of the comfort of the kitchen.

"This assessment
is about broadening their horizons instead of a traditional assessment like
cooking a dish in the kitchen. They were not only tested on their cooking
skills, but on a range of skills, like menu planning, budgeting and costing, food
safety and sustainability. We tried to bring all of that together in one
assessment."

Once the
students finished their dish, under the eye of the customers, they had to serve
their food. It was the first time a Pop Up Restaurant was used as part of the
assessment process.

"It turned
out to be a great success. We got a lot of positive feedback and we will definitely
do it again next year with new students."

It was a
long-term project where students learned to plan and work under pressure. They
had been preparing since February and had to grow their own vegetables at home
and document the process in order to have more options for the menu.

"I enjoyed
it, because I feel I improved a lot. I'm doing and learning at the same time,
which is a great feeling", says student Mandy Xu.

"I was a
little nervous at the start, but it is good practice and it makes me better. It
will also be useful for our future careers. I made a beetroot and apple salad,
a beef mince pasta with cheese and a puff pastry with custard and mix berry
sauce. I think the customers were happy!" adds student Ziqi Wang.

Future
Cookery assessments will be more like the Pop Up Restaurant. "Times are
changing and especially in Christchurch after the earthquakes. We have to stay
up to date and expose our students to this. We need to let them do assessments
in a real world atmosphere. We will try to send them off campus more often,
because there is more to Professional Cookery than the traditional restaurant
scenario," adds David.

The Pop Up
Restaurant turned out to be a real success. The Culinary Arts students did a
great job, with 99% of the customers' feedback being very good to excellent and
all students passed.